The website Blue Planet Green Living interviewed me for their 5 Ways To Save The Planet item. These are my responses:
BPGL: What are the five most important things we can do to save the planet?
McCANN:
- Stop trying to save the planet. This sounds a little counter-intuitive, but there are a few things behind my answer. The first is the idea that it’s not our job to save the planet — the planet doesn’t need us. It was here before us and will be around long after we go (and I’m guessing we eventually will). Second, trying to save anybody or anything often ends up with well-intentioned blindness, where I become so convinced that I’m on the Side of The Angels that I don’t think to question myself. That, then, all too easily comes with shoulds, musts, and have tos, directed at other people. Third, I find that it can get a little disheartening to have expectations or aspirations that are so huge that they approach the infinitudes of impossibility, when I think of little ol’ me in my little ol’ life. I’m all for avoiding despair where I can, and Saving The Planet sounds like something for a superhero; last time I checked, I’m no superhero. However, I do assume I always-already make a difference. So, I’m less a “Save the Planet” kinda guy, and more about …
- Staying “here”. We can often think of hope for helpful change as being located somewhere else, somewhere better, somewhere in the future, somewhere just out of reach, somewhere very different to what’s happening here. I’m not interested in those kinds of hope. For me, hope works better when it’s here. Right here, part of my life. For me, politics also works better when it’s here. How can I become more present here? How can I learn to listen better to what’s going on for me, within me, around me? What possibilities do the current situation open up for helpful change? What can I helpfully do in my own neighbourhood, my own town, my own family? What resistances can I find within myself that draw me away from a focus on being here, living here, making a difference here? How can I open myself up more to the uncertainties of what happens that “here” involves? Do I ever assume that here is just not good enough, even when it’s all I’ve got to work with? Can I learn to be more patient, and not assume that things have to be, must be, should be, different than what’s already here and available? How can I contribute? How can I help? Might not helping be more helpful, in some circumstances? Remaining here invites me to simply keep breathing, and to ask …
- What “smallest meaningful actions” can I undertake now, here, today? I love that E.F. Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful” mantra has become influential, and I think the invitation to smallest meaningful actions need never go away. I’m also a big fan of filmmaker John Cassavetes’ belief in the power of “small emotions”, those micromoments of everyday life where we experience difference as we make a difference. Being shaped as we shape. Being changed as we change. I love small and specific, as it tends to fit with “here”, and with embodied, present hope. It’s one of the reasons I love the BPGL website, the Green Is Sexy website, or the work of Baglady Productions (ASAP), and other websites like these that encourage people to think about small, manageable, meaningful differences that we can make in our lives. Becoming more aware of participation in the small stuff is crucial for me, but also …
- Placing small stuff in a wider context. I think it’s really important to consider the way that our small differences can link to larger currents, structures, movements, and resonances. That, for me, includes, for example, the challenge of facing up to unhelpful, expansionary, encroaching changes with social, political, economic, and environmental impact — the various enclosures that people experience around the world. Clear cutting happens. Mountaintop removal mining happens. “Ethnic cleansing” happens. Corporate greed happens. War happens. I think we encounter many opportunities to either challenge or support “the way things tend to be”, opportunities to respond to the structural violences, coercions, dominations, and obediences of daily existence. Every day includes multiple invitations to respond, multiple opportunities to clarify what’s important to me, multiple moments of potential resistance, co-optation, and acquiescence. Which leads me to …
- Clarifying what’s important to me. I think it’s important to regularly check in with myself about what’s important to me. Kurt Vonnegut and many others have warned about the dangers of being careful who you pretend to be for that is who you are likely to become. Similarly, for me, it’s crucial to really hone my sense of what’s important to me, as I find myself involved in particular situations. To do that, I use a “question cycle”: 1) What’s important to me? 2) What’s important to others? 3) What about what’s important to me comes from others, other times, or other places? 4) What would I like to be important to me? I try to revisit this question cycle often. Each person or situation I encounter on my way can be an invitation to clarify my priorities. The more I do this, the more I can trust myself to feel my way, as I listen to what’s going on. I trust that people can make sense of things for themselves, in a helpful way, bit by bit.
- Being prepared to adapt the framework or structures that I’m offered (“being cheeky”). So, here’s a sixth one to tie them all together — having courage: courage to remain small; courage to be and be in place where I happen to be; courage to learn; courage to keep going; courage to open myself to people, especially when I am inclined not to; courage to become more thoughtful, accountable, responsible, and transparent about whatever differences I can make; courage to listen.
